Campaign Finance Gets New Scrutiny (But Not From the Media)

Matthew Mosk, Washington Post “reporter,” has been given the assignment of putting lipstick on the campaign finance fraud that is being committed by the Obama campaign.

No longer able to spike the news that has the Internet abuzz about fraudulent credit card contributions to the Obama campaign, Mosk writes a story that makes it appear to be a systemic campaign issue rather than an Obama issue.

He does this in various ways. Here is his lede:

Sen. Barack Obama's record-breaking $150 million fundraising performance in September has for the first time prompted questions about whether presidential candidates should be permitted to collect huge sums of money through faceless credit card transactions over the Internet.

No, it hasn’t. The question is about the Obama campaign’s disabling of credit card payment fraud filters that have allowed obviously fake names like Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to make contributions to Obama’s campaign.

Lawyers for both the Republican and Democratic parties have asked the Federal Election Commission to examine the issue, pointing to dozens of examples of what they say are lax screening procedures by the presidential campaigns that permitted donors using false names or stolen credit cards to make contributions.

This is an obvious attempt to provide an equivalence. And it doesn’t wash. First because McCain has chosen to accept Federal funds and is not dependent on fundraising like Obama. And second because attempts to make contributions using fake names and addresses are being screened out by the McCain campaign credit card fraud filters while the Obama campaign has turned those filters off.

While the potentially fraudulent or excessive contributions represent about 1 percent of Obama's staggering haul, the security challenge is one of several major campaign-finance-related questions raised by the Democrat's fundraising juggernaut.

This paragraph begins with a lie. The writer does not know what the “potentially fraudulent or excessive contributions represent.” He takes the Obama campaign at its word when it claims that:

In September, according to the campaign, $1.8 million in online contributions was flagged, and $353,000 was refunded. Of the contributions flagged because a foreign address or bank account was involved, 94.1 percent were found to be proper. One-tenth of one percent were marked for refund, and 5.77 percent are still being vetted.
In paragraph 9 we finally learn of : Donors to the Obama campaign using false names such as Doodad Pro and Good Will gave $17,375 through 1,000 separate donations, with no sign that they immediately tripped alarms at the campaign.

Mosk then turns to the McCain campaign and tries to establish that it’s equally riddled with fraud:

McCain's contributor database shows at least 201 donations from individuals listing themselves as "anonymous" or "anonymous anonymous," according to Obama's campaign. In one particularly embarrassing episode, the McCain campaign mistakenly sent a fundraising solicitation to the Russian ambassador to the United Nations.

I have gone to the McCain contributor website and find nothing about a contributor named "anonymous." I wonder if Mosk checked or simply accepted their word.

It goes unrecorded whether the Russian ambassador contributed to McCain. If he did, I’m sure that would have been noted.

Then, totally dismissing the question of whether there is either minor or massive fraud being perpetrated on the public, Mosk assumes that everything is on the up-and-up and predicts that this will revolutionize campaign finance. Before we go there, a curious reporter may well have wondered how the Obama campaign, having turned off its fraud filters on the credit card contributions, is vetting the contributions.


There are a few facts that strike me as odd about the massive Obama contributions. Obama said he raised $150 million in a single month, September. Let’s do some simple math. According to FEC records, about half of Obama’s contributions come from donors under $200.

Let’s assume that’s also true in September. That leaves us with $75 million. Those contributions can be anywhere from, say, $5 to $200. If we assume the best case that every contributions was for $200, that means that the Obama campaign would have to screen 375,000 contributors in September to insure that none are fraudulent. Since they have turned off the credit card fraud screens, they would have to be done manually. Let’s assume a room full of hyper-efficient fraud screeners working for Obama in 8 hour shifts, taking no breaks, screening 12,500 contributions per day taking just sixty seconds to verify a contributor’s name, address, employers and occupation. That would take 26 screeners working 7 days a week.

If the average donation is less than $200 (and Obama brags about the $5, $10 and $25 dollar contributions) the number of people required to properly vet these contributions becomes enormous. And I don’t believe for a minute that this can be done in a minute per contributor.

So here’s the bottom line. The Obama campaign has made a deliberate decision to rake in as much money as possible and forget about where it comes from. They are not going to get caught by the MSM who are rooting for them. The numbers of contributors fake and real are going to create data overload on any organization like the FEC that tries to do an audit. And after the election, the FEC will be in Obama’s hands.

The danger to Democracy from a media that takes a dive for a candidate is becoming more and more apparent.